


Purple and Red

by Isilarma



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isilarma/pseuds/Isilarma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't care. She didn't know how to. In the end, they taught each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple and Red

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone at the Beta Branch for all your help.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

She'd lost track of the number of people she'd killed. Some of them deserved it. Some didn't. It didn't used to matter. She killed for them and they protected her and looked after her so that she could kill for them again. Not because they cared for her. They didn't even like her. She was useful to them. Just useful. It didn't matter if she didn't like it, because she knew no other way to be. Until a man in a purple bodysuit came to kill her.

He didn't used to care. Not about the carnival and the people he entertained. Not about the men he killed, for money or for SHIELD. He left bodies in his wake, and if he couldn't remember every single one of their faces, he wasn't going to let it bother him. And he told himself that it didn't, until he was ordered to kill a young woman with red hair.

She knew why he was there. They told her she was at risk, that she was a target. They told her that they would keep her safe. They lied. He found her. He could have killed her. He should have killed her. She knew she deserved it.

He thought she would be older. He had read her file; he knew what she was capable of. Her employers did too. She was too easy to find. It seemed SHIELD wasn't the only person who wanted her dead. She was unprepared when he arrived; it would have been easy to do his job. But he had never been very good at following orders.

She didn't believe him when he told her to follow him. She thought it was a trick, that he was going to capture her, interrogate her, pick every last piece of information from her brain and then kill her. She laughed at him. She fought him, expecting him to kill her in revenge. She was sick of being used.

He smiled when she laughed at his uniform. He grinned when she fought back. Had she been armed, she would have killed him. He knew he had made the right choice. Coulson disagreed, but it didn't matter. He didn't want to leave a body behind, another nameless face. He was tired of not caring.

She didn't like it at SHIELD. She hated the rules and the order, and the way people looked at her, like they were waiting to see what she would do, like she was a wild animal and they were waiting for her to snap. It reminded her of what she had left behind. They watched her, but they never helped her, all except the man in the purple bodysuit.

He came back. He could have left her to make her own way, like he had had to. No one would have blamed him; many would actively have encouraged him to avoid her. He had every intention of doing so. But he couldn't forget the woman with the red hair. He was surprised to find that he didn't want to.

She didn't like him. She resented him. He had come into her life and changed everything she knew. But she looked forward to his visits because he was the only person who spoke to her as if she was a person too. The first person in a long time who looked at her and didn't just see a killer. The first person who actually seemed to care.

He didn't want to care for her. People you cared for let you down, and being betrayed by someone you cared about hurt a lot more than being betrayed by a stranger. He tried to stop. He found that he couldn't. He found himself looking forward to his visits as much as she did. It was a new feeling. An interesting feeling.

She thought he was joking when he invited her on a mission. She thought he was playing a game of his own. She thought he wanted to use her like they did. It hurt more than it did when they did it though. She had begun to care about him; she had thought that he cared about her too.

He had been worried that she would betray him. In a way, she did. He would never have used her like they did, and he thought she knew that. It hurt. He asked her to trust him. He was almost certain that she would refuse. She surprised him again.

She saved his life on that mission. He saved hers. The mission led to others. Things began to change. Other people saw her work with him, and began to trust her. They saw him change because of her, and began to like him. Neither of them understood, but neither of them minded. They didn't speak of it, but things continued to change.

People began to speak of them together. The Widow and the Hawk. They were the best at what they did. To each other though, they were more than that. If she couldn't remember how many people she killed, he understood. When he forgot their faces, she knew what he was feeling. It helped more than either of them could fully express, but then, they didn't have to. It was enough to know that someone understood everything that they had done, all the horrors they had committed and cared all the same.


End file.
